A Fistful of Strontium

by Jaspre Bark

  "I haven't had the time or the tools to finish this job properly," said Valerie. Surrounded by dismantled blasters, she was sitting on the floor of a cave in the foothills to the west of the mountains, fixing the last of the jetpack casings.

  "I haven't the time to listen to excuses," said Johnny. Time was short since the trek to the hidden jetpacks took longer than anticipated. "Will they work?"

  "More or less. I've rewired the controls so you can navigate, but I haven't totally recalibrated them so you won't be able to turn as sharply or as quickly as before. Please bear that in mind. I've also increased the flow of fuel to give you the extra power you need to reach higher altitudes. This also means that you'll burn fuel twice as quickly and, as none of these jetpacks has a full tank, you won't have much time in the air."

  "We'll have enough for what I need to do," said Johnny.

  He left her to make the final adjustments and walked outside the cave. Middenface and Moosehead were scoping the terrain. "Any sign of the air carrier?" he asked.

  "It'll be along in twenty minutes or so," said Moosehead.

  "How the sneck can ye tell that?" asked Middenface.

  Moosehead pointed to the sky. "Shape of the clouds, quality of the air, movements and flight patterns of the birds. It all adds up."

  The carrier pulled into view about twenty minutes later. Johnny nodded when he saw it, and then buckled on one of the rebuilt jetpacks and checked his detonation blaster. Moosehead had lost none of his touch.

  The carrier was a large, flat ship built for transporting cargo and troops. It was flying at a low altitude just above the tops of the mountains. Johnny, Middenface and Moosehead fired up their jetpacks and flew towards it. Moosehead shot forward over the top of the carrier and headed towards its rear. Middenface pulled around to the side, and Johnny made for the pilot's deck at the front.

  As the carrier approached him, Johnny could make out six guards and three pilots behind a sheet of plexiglass. He levelled his blaster, adjusted the range, and let off eight shots in rapid succession. The shots sailed through the glass and then detonated on deck. Five guards and one pilot fell before they'd even seen their attacker.

  Through the portholes in the carrier's side, Middenface counted twelve guards inside the cargo hold. They were sitting around, supposedly guarding the precious crates that were stacked high around them, but in reality expecting no threat. Middenface targeted six, his first volley catching four of them completely off guard. He swore violently at having missed the other two who by sheer luck had happened to move just before the blaster fire detonated.

  Before they could see him, he flew beneath the metallic underbelly of the carrier and came up on the other side. He readjusted his blaster and loosed off seven more shots, taking out five more guards. The remaining three took cover so Middenface couldn't get a bead on them. Still, he had done what he had planned to do: he had severely depleted the carrier's defences.

  Moosehead hovered above the carrier's onboard engines. He counted six. He let off a shot at the furthest right engine. As he did so, the carrier hit an air pocket and jumped, causing his shot to go wide and explode out of range. Moosehead tried again, sending off three shots in frustration. The engine blew apart in a fierce burst of flames and thick black smoke.

  The carrier started to bank steeply to the left. To level it out, Moosehead sent two shots into the furthest left engine. It exploded so violently that it came away from its fixtures and shot off into the sky, hurtling straight towards him.

  Moosehead opened the throttle on his jetpack and sped off to the side. He was just in time to dodge the flaming engine but he had to use another thrust to catch up with the moving carrier again. He took out two more engines, causing the carrier to shake and veer to the right and lose height. As it did so, his jetpack began to make an extremely unhealthy spluttering sound. Moosehead checked the fuel gauge to find that it was practically empty.

  He had only one option. He opened the throttle one last time and flew straight at the roof of the carrier. His jetpack cut out and he rolled just in time to land on his back and let the spent pack take the force of the fall. The impact knocked the breath out of him and also caused an injury. With his left shoulder dislocated, he slid along the carrier's roof, forced backwards by the velocity at which it was travelling. He would be thrown off within seconds.

  Moosehead unbuckled the jetpack and rolled to the right, managing to catch hold of the twisted fuselage of a wrecked engine mount. Fighting the forward motion of the carrier, he crawled into a crevice formed by the mount's support. He flattened himself against the blackened, hot metal - safe for the time being, but out of the fight. He only hoped that Johnny and Middenface could land this thing gently.

  Middenface joined Johnny at the cargo hold door. The big lug gave him a thumbs-up sign to show that all was going according to plan.

  There was no sign of Moosehead, but Johnny had seen the explosions from the engines so he knew that he had succeeded in undertaking his part of the job. There was no time to worry about anything else. They would just have to pray that their partner was all right and press on without him.

  Johnny shot the lock off the door and he and Middenface tugged it open and flew inside. The decompression of the air inside the cargo hold yanked one guard right out. The other two guards could not be seen as Johnny and Middenface wedged the door shut and their jetpacks finally gave out.

  "No way offa here now, hey Johnny?" said Middenface cheerfully.

  "Only one," said Johnny, "and that's down."

  They were checking the hold for the surviving guards when the door to the pilot's deck burst open and a giant of a man jumped Middenface. He must have been at least seven feet tall and was covered with hair. He looked for all the world like a gorilla in an ill-fitting uniform. The guard had Middenface in an armlock and he was clearly struggling.

  "A little help here, Johnny," he cried out.

  Johnny couldn't get a clear shot for fear of hitting his partner. He charged instead and brought the butt of his blaster down hard at the base of the guard's skull. The blow, which would have floored a normal man, hardly even fazed him. The guard swatted Johnny aside with the back of his left hand, sending him sprawling. But Johnny had provided enough of a distraction for Middenface to wriggle free.

  Middenface hit the ground and kicked the guard's feet out from under him. The guard fell backwards and came down hard. Johnny took the opportunity to release three shots into the guard's chest, which erupted in a fountain of gore and charred ribs.

  Middenface picked himself up and they entered the pilot's deck. The two surviving pilots were having serious problems with the controls.

  "Now listen carefully," said Johnny, pointing his gun at the chief pilot's head. "There's a plateau coming up on your left. You've got less than two minutes to land this carrier there."

  "I don't make deals with terrorists," the pilot said with contempt in his voice.

  "You don't have any other choice," said Johnny. "You're rapidly losing altitude anyway. Do exactly as I tell you and you might just live."

  "What makes you think I won't crash this bird for the hell of it?" asked the pilot.

  "Because you're no hero," Johnny said menacingly, leaning in close to him.

  The pilot swallowed hard and brought the carrier slowly down towards the plateau. "I'll do my best but you've not left the old bird in much of a shape," he complained.

  They came in fast and low. Up until the last minute, Johnny didn't really fancy his chances of walking away from this one, and indeed, it was not a smooth landing. As they bumped along the floor of the plateau, he and Middenface were knocked off their feet. They could hear the high-pitched shriek of metal rending and tearing as the undercarriage was torn off. Then, finally, they ground to a halt.

  Elephant Head was waiting for them with a contingent of Salvationists and a host of recently assembled wooden carts to take the weapons away. Johnny and Moosehead's earlier calculations of where the carrie
r would end up was spot on. The Salvationists swarmed onto the grounded carrier, rounded up the two surviving guards and began to unload crates. A shaken Moosehead called out from on top of the carrier and ropes were found to help him climb down.

  Johnny was surveying the operation when one of the captured guards broke free of his escort and ran up to him. "Johnny. Hey, Johnny! Remember me? It's Scaly! We fought together at the Siege of Upminster. I had no idea you were in the militia, or even on Miltonia for that matter. You must have been on the pilot's deck when they hit. Stinking terrorists, they won't get away with this! They don't know who they're dealing with! They won't break you, will they, Johnny? Not you, you're..."

  The scaly-skinned mutant's voice suddenly trailed away, and he looked as if the bottom had dropped out of his world.

  "Oh sneck, Johnny, no. Tell me it ain't true. You're not working with these terrorist scum, are you? I heard a rumour that you'd become a stinking Strontie, but this is worse, much worse!" Scaly's captors had caught up to him by now, and he didn't resist as they took hold of him again. "How much are they paying you, Johnny?" he shouted as he was dragged away. "How much did they give you to turn on your own kind? Those men you killed today, they had homes and families, you know. Whatever you're getting out of this, I hope it's worth the lives of all the innocent mutants you've killed!"

  Johnny turned away, unable to listen to any more. He felt the hand of a norm Salvationist on his shoulder and a comforting voice said: "Don't listen to him, Johnny. What you're doing now is for a far better cause than taking blood money for bounties."

  "Take your stinking hands off me, norm!" he demanded, his voice thick with venom. The norm fell back, shaken by the force of the verbal attack.

  Johnny strode off and threw himself into the task of getting the weapons loaded onto the carts. Anything to stop himself from having to think about Scaly said. Was all of this really worth it?

  Suddenly, seven hundred thousand credits didn't seem so much after all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE WHOLE KIT AND KABOODLE

  He was coming.

  The Consoler had known it for some time, long before he heard the hum of the lift, the squealing of its doors and the footsteps that now halted outside his cell. He had sensed his brother's conflict: his fear of confronting his past, a touch of shame at the anticipation of its judgement, and the stubbornness with which he had fought those emotions. Kit insisted to himself that he was in control. He tried to make himself feel powerful.

  It had taken him two days to make up his mind, but when he'd done so at last, the Consoler had felt a wave of bliss wash over him. Kit, in turn, had sensed this and became paranoid again. But the Consoler had not doubted his eventual decision. He had known it even before Kit had been able to acknowledge it to himself.

  He climbed to his feet as the door was cracked open, spilling a little cold light into his tiny, dark cube. There was a sickness in his stomach, a thrill up his spine, and he didn't know which sensations were his own and which his brother's. He could feel their lungs drawing breath in unison, their heartbeats syncopating, and he felt as if he had regained a part of himself.

  Then he was there: a menacing silhouette with the light behind him and flanked by muscular guards. The brothers faced each other for the first time in over ten years. It was the moment that the Consoler had dreamed of and rehearsed over and over again, only this time he had forgotten all his carefully chosen words. For one of the few times in his life, he didn't know what to say. And he knew that Kit felt the same so they just stared at each other, adjusting to each other's new physical forms.

  Kit's current shape meant little to the Consoler, of course. Nose Job Johnson was just a man he had seen a few times on the holo-news, with a sprawling, mutated nose and a smart suit. But that body was no more than a shell and the Consoler could see through it. He saw a pale, frightened child huddled in the corner of a one-room shack in a Thulium ghetto, with tears in his eyes and a bruise on his cheek.

  And he reached out to him.

  "Who did this to you, Kit? Was it the Rockets again?"

  Kit shrugged away the proffered hand and buried his face. He didn't want to talk but as usual his brother wouldn't shut up. He could feel Kaboodle's presence inside him, in his head and heart, comforting and cajoling him. He tried to resist it but it was like denying a part of himself.

  He raised his head to face his own mirror image. "I tried to do what mom said," he blurted out. "I tried to stay away from them, honest I did."

  Kaboodle nodded and squatted beside him. "I know. It isn't always that easy. Once they've singled you out, they'll find you. It's not your fault."

  "Then why do they keep on picking on me?" he wailed.

  "They're norms," said Kaboodle. "It's their problem, not yours. They're afraid of anything different."

  He always knew what to say. Kaboodle was only eleven, like Kit himself, but he was older than Kit by an hour and he seemed wiser than any grown-up. Kit didn't know what he would have done without him.

  "I tried to be like them," he said. "That older kid, Spike, they call him. He was calling me names and everyone was laughing, like they always do. They all dress like him and talk like him and laugh when he laughs, so he leaves them alone. And I thought, why can't I do that? So I started to laugh, too."

  Kaboodle looked at him with a kind smile. "You did more than that." He brushed a lock of chestnut hair away from Kit's forehead - hair that Kit hadn't had that morning. No wonder Spike had looked so surprised, afraid and angry in quick succession. No wonder he'd lashed out.

  "I was only trying to fit in," Kit said sullenly.

  "That's where you made your mistake," said Kaboodle with a sigh. "We can never 'fit in' with people like that. They won't let us."

  "But they don't give you a hard time. Not like they do me."

  "That's because they know I'll stand up for myself. I've told you before, Kit, you have to fight back and meet violence with violence."

  "There's too many of them."

  "Then you have to find their weaknesses; find a way to beat them. It's the only language they understand."

  "Mom says-"

  "Mom doesn't understand. She's a norm, too, and drokk knows she has the patience of a saint to have raised mutant twins, but she doesn't know what it's like to be us. She won't accept that we can't fit in here."

  Kit gaped at his brother, alarmed. "You snuck out to the township again!"

  "I've been going there every night. I want to take you there, too."

  He shook his head stubbornly. "Mom says the people who live there are crooks."

  "They're mutants, Kit, like you and me. And yes, the norms would call them criminals, but that's because the only way for a mutant to better himself on this world is through taking what they won't let us have."

  "You'll get into trouble."

  "You're the one with the black eye." The remark wasn't meant to be nasty, but to be an observation. Kaboodle was examining Kit's face. "You know, you're getting better at that. Anyone who didn't know you like I do, I'd swear they'd think you were Spike's younger brother. Funny, though."

  "What is?"

  "Our power never worked on a norm before."

  Kaboodle looked searchingly into Kit's eyes and Kit knew he could hide nothing from him. He squirmed and his cheeks burned hot. Bad enough that he had changed again since it would be hours before his face returned to normal and he could show it in public, but this time, there was something else. Something unspeakable. Something that had twisted and corrupted his body, making him outwardly the freak he had always been on the inside. And he was afraid that it wouldn't go away.

  His brother felt his fear and calmed him with a smile and a telepathic hug. "Interesting," he said. "Very interesting indeed." He stood and extended his hand again. This time, Kit accepted it and let himself be hauled to his feet.

  "I think we've found our friend Spike's weakness," said Kaboodle, and his smile held no trace of warmth now. "Co
me with me tonight, Kit. To the township. Just once, that's all I ask. Come with me and I'll show you how to deal with his kind. I'll show you how to make sure they don't hurt you again."

  It was only later that Kit learned everything his brother had done for him that day. Later, when Kaboodle's actions had become the stuff of urban legend.

  He had walked right up to Spike in front of his followers in the Rocket gang and challenged him to a fight. Spike had laughed in his face and accepted, seeing an opportunity to enhance his reputation at the expense of a younger, weaker opponent. It wasn't the first time Kaboodle had taken a beating for his brother, nor would it be the last.

  The turning point came as Spike was driving a booted foot into the prone Kaboodle's ribs and the underdog saw his chance. He reached up, took hold of Spike's waistband and yanked his trousers down. The humiliation alone would have ensured that his opponent lost more face than he could gain from the encounter, but in this case, that was the least of his problems.

  For nineteen years, Spike and his family had concealed his disgrace. There was no hiding it now. The other Rockets gaped in horror at the sight of a short, reptilian tail, glistening and twitching behind him.

  It took less than six hours for Spike to be disowned by his parents, sacked by his employer, and assaulted by his old gang. He arrived in the mutant township shortly before midnight to find that Kaboodle had organised a reception for him.

  Kit was one of the vengeful mutants who had gathered around the newcomer as he kneeled in the dirt and whimpered. Tomorrow, Spike would be one of them. For now, he was still a norm in their eyes; someone who had hated and mistreated them, and they would take a grim pleasure in seeing him suffer.

  He watched in silence as the older mutants had their fun. They left Spike a bloody, blubbering mess and dispersed into the shadows. And then Kaboodle was at Kit's side, beckoning him forward and urging him to take a good look at his one-time tormentor. Kit was reluctant at first, his legs feeling heavy, each step seeming to cross a mile. A part of him expected to see that old sneer on Spike's face, but he drew on Kaboodle's courage and made himself confront it.